


Watcher in the Storm

by Sholio



Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5528969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months post-finale, Peter and Neal still haven't seen each other. But that changes when Neal becomes ill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is written by request for a_pennny, who asked for [this prompt](http://collarcorner.livejournal.com/34806.html?thread=1202422#t1202422) on the [collarcorner](http://collarcorner.livejournal.com/) LJ comm. I meant to have it completely done by Christmas ... but, uh, that didn't quite happen, so I'm posting the first couple of chapters now, and the rest will be up when completed, which should be in the next few days.
> 
> Many thanks to [frith_in_thorns](http://archiveofourown.org/users/frith_in_thorns) for feedback and cheerleading!

Six months. And a week and three days.

Not that he was counting.

It had been six months since Neal had broken his self-imposed exile and decided to drop a few more obvious clues to his whereabouts. The fact that Peter didn't seem to have picked up on the clues he'd left along with his "death" was ... something he'd decided not to examine too closely. 

No one had picked up on it. 

He had really thought they'd all figure it out in a month or two, tops.

"It's because we were all busy grieving for you, _idiot,"_ Mozzie had said, six months ago on their first night together in Paris, in the middle of a long semi-drunken ramble that was half harangue and half philosophical maundering on the nature of life and death.

And Neal had laughed uncomfortably and changed the subject, because there was something in Mozzie's voice too close to tears. Okay, yes, people had been sad, but if they'd really wanted to find him -- Mozzie was one thing, maybe, but he'd _seen_ how Peter operated even when unhappy, even when ill or distracted. Grief wouldn't derail Peter's tenacity. If they had really wanted to find him ...

But anyway. He'd dropped clues, and Mozzie had come. There had been a part of him that wasn't sure, that hadn't even wanted to push harder because of the chance he'd turn out to be wrong. _What if no one ever came at all._ What if they really were that angry ...

But Mozzie wasn't; Mozzie came. And Mozzie yelled at him a little at first, but mostly it was ... good. Neal had spent the last year feeling like he was trying to walk with only one leg, missing a step whenever he had a passing comment and no one to share it with; whenever he saw something that made him think of Mozzie or Peter or Diana or June.

For years, ever since walking out of his mother's house on his eighteenth birthday, he'd traveled the world footloose and free. He had friends, he had partners and lovers, but only on _his_ terms. He saw them when he wanted to, and skipped out of town if he didn't. During his long prison sentence, during his years on a two-mile radius, he'd looked back through a nostalgic glow at those days. And then he managed to recapture it, and couldn't understand why it just felt wrong, like trying to put on a suit of clothes tailored for someone else.

So. Mozzie came.

Peter ... didn't.

One out of two wasn't bad, right?

"Well, he's busy, you know," Mozzie said. "New baby and all. You know they named the kid after you, right?"

"Yes, Moz, you've only mentioned it about forty times."

So life went on, but it almost felt _worse,_ now, having Mozzie there, because he still had the things-don't-fit feeling; he still had the itchy, restless feeling of _pointlessness_ that he'd been struggling with for the entire previous year. Stealing was easy. It was no challenge at all. He could easily get enough to live on, and live well, from just a few good forgeries a year. Anything else felt ...

Pointless.

Mozzie, of course, wanted to jump back in. Mozzie was a geyser of pent-up heist plans, as if he'd been bottling it up for a year and now he had to explode.

"You're planning to rob the Louvre, right? That's why you left all of that in the shipping container for the Suit, isn't it?"

"Who _doesn't_ want to rob the Louvre?" Neal countered, because it was better than admitting that he'd baited his hook with a lure he knew Peter couldn't resist. If Peter thought he was after the Mona Lisa, Peter would be on the next flight to Paris; he literally wouldn't be able to help himself. _Go big or go home_ had always been the creed he'd lived by, and if he couldn't say he'd gone straight (because he hadn't) the next best thing was to drop the heist to end all heists on Peter's doorstep and see what followed. It was better than admitting he had, over the last year, committed few enough crimes that he could count them all on his fingers, and all of those were the kind of bread-and-butter, paying-the-bills criminal activities that he'd have considered beneath him in his younger days. A few forgeries, a pickpocketing or two in the beginning ... and he'd felt thoroughly guilty about those, guilty enough he'd ended up trying to aim for functionally victimless crimes as much as possible: peddling forgeries of obscure impressionists to people with enough money they weren't going to miss a few hundred thousand here or there, for example. He didn't go for anything splashy (no Rembrandt or Renoir, no long-lost Da Vinci originals). And then he had enough money to easily go for two or three years without having to break any laws at all, and then ...

... then what. That was the question. That was the problem.

He and Mozzie constructed elaborate plans to rob the Louvre, to siphon gold out of Fort Knox, to walk away with priceless Egyptian artifacts or plunder the treasures of long-vanished Persian emperors. But Neal had a feeling their plans were no more likely to come to pass than any of the schemes they'd come up with while he was still on the anklet. It was all just talk. It was a way of passing the days that stretched long and oddly boring in front of him.

A person could live to be eighty or ninety. That was fifty or sixty _years_ of this, and what did people do to fill up all that time?

"Have you been to see Sara?" Mozzie asked.

"You're _encouraging_ me in my romantic endeavors, rather than inviting yourself along on my dates and sweeping anyone I bring home for bugs or mind-control devices? Moz. I'm disappointed."

"That'd be a no, then."

"I don't know why you care," Neal retorted, more snappishly than he'd meant to, and then stopped as if he'd stepped on something he didn't want to step on.

This seemed to strike off a spark in Mozzie. "Maybe because I'd like to see you get out and live a little, instead of sitting at home ..." He flailed his hands as if he'd lost the words, and finally came up with, "-- drinking all the time!"

Neal raised his eyebrows. "Pot? Kettle? Anyway, I certainly am _not_ drinking all the time." Defiantly, he topped off his glass of wine. "And I get out."

"Name one time in the last month you've done anything outside this apartment other than finding new restaurants to drink at."

"Mozzie," Neal pointed out, "most people _do_ consider it 'going out' to have a nice meal in a decent restaurant."

"Do you listen to yourself? Someone's stolen my best friend and replaced him with an elderly suburbanite."

Neal snorted. "Fine. We'll go somewhere. Name a place. Halfway around the world, why not? Let's board a flight tonight and we can be having authentic sushi in Tokyo tomorrow, or lounging on a beach in the Bahamas. Name it and we'll do it."

"That's not the point," Mozzie said, taken aback.

"Isn't it?" Neal asked. "Isn't it exactly the point? We're living the dream here. All the money we want, and not a care in the world. We can literally do _anything we want_ and nobody can stop us."

Mozzie squinted at him. "You're drunk. At three in the afternoon."

"Am not," Neal snapped, and sulked off to the balcony with the rest of the bottle of wine.

Okay, so it was possible he wasn't dealing with total freedom quite as well as he'd expected.

"Have you thought about just _calling_ the Suit?" Mozzie asked, a day or two later. "You know, rather than leaving cryptic bread crumb trails as part of that peculiarly twisted federal agent-con artist mating dance I usually try not to think about."

"What's this obsession with everyone I used to know, all of a sudden? I thought you spent most of the time we were in New York wanting it to be back to just the two of us."

"No I didn't," Mozzie said promptly.

"Yes, you did."

"... all right, maybe I did, but primarily on the general principle that I wanted my best friend back, rather than the clipped-wings junior-FBI-clone version of him. Not ..." He waved a hand wildly in Neal's general direction. "This. I'd happily take FBI Neal over this, any day."

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Neal protested, exasperated beyond belief.

This degenerated into a fight and ended with Mozzie signing up for a month-long tour of endangered bat habitat in Greece, via a contact with some sort of rare-bat researcher he had apparently met and dated while she was on vacation in Paris in the last month or two ... which Neal now realized he'd had no knowledge of at the time.

"You had an entire Parisian love affair with a bat geek without telling me about it?"

"I hate to break it to you, _mon frère_ , but it's difficult to tell you anything when you can't hear me over the sound of your own pity party."

Mozzie was still upset about the FBI thing, clearly. Even if Neal still couldn't figure out exactly what aspect of the FBI thing was upsetting him now, or why he hadn't stopped harping on it when that was all in the past anyway.

"Have a great time with your damned bats, Moz."

"Better than here, probably," Mozzie muttered, and stomped out the door with a large backpack and a net on a pole.

So there he was ... again. Alone in Paris. Making things worse, it was winter now. Neal couldn't help remembering how utterly dismal he'd found the previous winter, a far cry from the magical wonderland of colored lights and Christmas markets he'd sometimes envisioned while he was stuck on his radius. Instead he'd found it cold and damp and dreary, and had spent the entire winter with a miserable case of bronchitis that came and went. For the actual holiday itself, he'd ended up fleeing Paris entirely and hiding out in a Tunisian beach town where nothing even remotely resembled Christmas. 

This year ... this year, he'd thought he might go out and look at the lights and the markets with Mozzie. Maybe they could have done a tour of famous Christmas markets and choirs, heading across the border into Germany, over to Vienna ... but no, he was alone _again_ , entirely his own fault this time (like it wasn't the last time too, he thought gloomily) and adding insult to injury, he was sick again -- a cold that seemed to be developing into another case of bronchitis like last year, based on his persistent coughing and general feeling of low-grade misery. Christmas came and went with little fanfare and no calls from Mozzie, who was probably still upset.

It didn't help to know that being ill, like all the rest of it, was probably his fault too. He knew he hadn't been taking care of himself. Mozzie was right, he was drinking too much; he wasn't eating properly, wasn't sleeping enough. It just didn't seem to _matter._ And the worst part was, he was pretty sure he knew why.

_I've been in prison so long I don't know how to be out anymore._

No wonder Mozzie didn't know how to deal with him now. He'd actually become one of those tragic ex-cons the two of them used to pity, the kind who had been inside for so long that they'd lost the ability to imagine a future on the outside. 

In his case, of course, it wasn't prison per se; it was a two-mile radius and a tracking anklet and a government-assigned job that he'd only taken as a temporary stepping stone to finding Kate. And it wasn't that he _wanted_ to be back there. He remembered, in a strictly academic kind of way, how much he'd hated having the government monitor his every step; how the terrifying specter of an entire lifetime on the tracking anklet had loomed ahead of him when he'd realized the FBI had no intention of letting him go, and there was nothing Peter could do to protect him, no agreement they'd be willing to honor. Peter had believed a piece of paper with a signature on it could do it, because Peter had the luxury of believing in things like that.

The Panthers had given him an honorable excuse to cut the tie, that was all.

And now, alone in the City of Lights in midwinter, he had to admit to himself, if to no one else, that it had never been more than an excuse. He'd run because running was what he knew; he hadn't trusted Peter to try to fix it because he had never been in the habit of trusting anyone but himself. For three years on the anklet he'd fooled himself that things could be different, and then he had to admit that he was who he was, and he could never change it. He'd left New York in the belief that he could go back to his old life -- a different glamorous hotel room every night, glittering casinos and high-stakes cons -- only to find that the life no longer fulfilled him, after he'd burned all bridges to that other life he'd left behind.

Now he had no idea who he was. He wasn't the guy Peter thought he could be, but somehow he'd turned into a person who wasn't the guy he used to be either. He was caught between two worlds, miserable in both places, unwelcome in either.

And _now_ he was pretty sure he was running a fever, and it hurt to breathe deeply, so maybe he'd just lie here in his apartment until he felt better. Mozzie wouldn't be back for weeks. There was no one checking up on him, no one following him around stalking him with an anklet tracking app. He could lie here as long as he wanted and no one was going to even notice.

Total freedom. Exactly what he'd always wanted.

It _sucked._


	2. Chapter 2

It had been six months. One year, six months and spare change. Not that Peter was counting.

"You could just call him," Elizabeth said quietly, lying on the couch with her body curled into his. "Mozzie could probably give you the number."

"What? Who? Call who?"

"Don't give me that, Peter Burke. I know who you're thinking about."

He looked down at the top of her head. "How do you do that?" he asked, half annoyed, half admiring.

"We've been married for fifteen years, Peter. And besides, I know he's on your mind a lot." She twisted around to lay a hand on his cheek. "I think you've been more distracted and unhappy since you found out he's alive than you were before."

"Maybe," Peter corrected her, placing his hand over hers. "Maybe he's alive."

"And if you try to get in touch," she said softly, echoing his thoughts again, "you'll know for sure."

"It's not just that." His gaze drifted from his wife's sympathetic face to the living room and the tree he'd put up and El had decorated last weekend. The living room lights were out; they'd taken down the tree, but left up the Christmas lights into early January, and now the room was bathed in silver and blue radiance. He and El had been watching a movie, but the DVD had ended and they were too comfortable and lazy to bother getting up.

"What else?" she asked.

"Just that I think the best thing I can do for him is not to bother him this time. He was happy in Cape Verde -- reasonably happy, I mean. He'd never have been in danger if a certain FBI agent hadn't decided he couldn't make it on his own and come barging into his life again."

"You were trying to protect him."

"Yeah, but who's going to protect him from me?" He was tense now, in spite of the six-pack he'd had earlier -- and that was something that he ought to keep an eye on, too. He'd started drinking a _lot_ in the wake of Neal's death, and though he'd managed to cut it back after baby Neal was born, it was starting to escalate again. Peter had grown up in an extended family of blue-collar guys at least half of whom were, he had realized as an adult, functional alcoholics, including his father. He knew the signs. It was easier, though, to take the edge off -- to stop his brain from spinning around the possibilities, falling back into all those well-worn unhappy grooves.

"Maybe you should let Neal decide that."

"I think he has," Peter pointed out. "It's been six months. He has our number; he knows where we live." In all truth he'd spent the first month or two after his discovery of the storage container eagerly collecting the mail every day, fully expecting to find one of Neal's playful cards, like the ones Neal had sent from prison or during their cat and mouse years. But there was nothing, and after his birthday came and went, he was forced to acknowledge that Neal wasn't still interested in those games. He had left a sign to let them know he was alive -- or, at least, Peter had to keep believing that it _had_ been Neal, and not Mozzie trying to give them hope, or one of their enemies playing some kind of twisted game. But the signs were equally clear that Neal had cut ties and gone off to make a life somewhere else.

And he _should,_ damn it, Peter thought. The anklet deal was always meant to be temporary. If things hadn't gone sideways, if Neal had served out his four years as originally intended, he'd be off the damn thing by now anyway.

He had to close his eyes against a wave of pain at the memory of what he'd _thought_ Neal's last day on the anklet would be like. There would have been a party -- cake and champagne. Neal would have been grinning, delighted to be the center of attention but also a little bashful in the way he always got when he realized that people genuinely _liked_ him. And then -- because if he was spinning out a fantasy, why not -- Neal would have gone on to do something useful and fulfilling with his life. He'd have gone back to school, perhaps. Peter wasn't quite willing to give hope enough rein to imagine Neal staying on and consulting with the FBI; he'd already tortured himself enough. Besides, as much as he would have liked that, he didn't want to always be the shadow in the background looming over Neal's life. 

_You go back to your life, and I get to have one of my own,_ Neal had said once. And he'd been right: he deserved to have his own life, without Peter in it, if that was what he wanted. Which apparently he did.

Peter tried to stop himself from wondering what kind of a life Neal had built for himself. Was he still pulling cons? In his heart of hearts, it was hard for Peter to believe that Neal had gone straight. But maybe he had. _Hell, this is fantasy. Let's go for it._ Maybe he was studying art in Paris. Maybe he'd started his own security consulting business.

_The last thing he needs is a ghost from his past showing up to make trouble for him._

And he'd almost stopped seeing Neal out of the corner of his eye, in crowds and in the lobby of the FBI building. Almost.

"Has the thought ever occurred to you that he might be doing the same thing you're doing?"

"Hmm?" His wandering attention was brought back to his wife again.

"Neal. I never knew him as well as you did, but don't forget I spent three years watching the two of you, and listening to you complain about how stubborn he can be and how he never listens to you. Traits which, I'm just going to say, sounded awfully familiar to me."

"Hey," Peter said, without any heat in it.

"I'm just saying, Peter Burke, I know you, and I know Neal, and I've watched you tie yourself into knots for the last six months because you miss him and you can't figure out how to approach him, or even if you should."

"I just explained why I shouldn't. I'm not going to be that guy anymore, El. Whatever life Neal's built for himself, wherever he is, I'm not going to walk into it and blow it up for him this time. He's entitled to have his own life without some nosy FBI agent poking around and bothering him."

"Is that all you think you were to him?" she asked gently.

"Wasn't I? At the end of the day, El, I'm the guy who put him in prison. Twice," he added, his smile slightly shadowed. "The tracking anklet might have been his idea, but it was never something he wanted. Every time he's had a chance to get off it, I've brought him back. I never waited long enough to find out if he _wanted_ to come back. This time, I'm going to do it right. I'm going to let him make his own choice. If he wants us in his life, that's fine. Better than fine. And if he doesn't, that's ... fine, too."

Elizabeth planted her face in his chest and slowly shook her head.

"What's wrong?" He anxiously patted at her hair. "Don't you think that's the right decision?"

"I think," she sighed, "that it's a very _you_ decision, because you are a darling man who takes his responsibilities so very seriously and tries so very, very hard. And it would not surprise me at all to find out that Neal's come to a similar conclusion about you, wherever he is."

"That I'm the FBI agent who wrecked his life?" It was always a possibility, but it stung to hear it from her.

"No, that he's the con artist who wrecked _your_ life, and that you and I would be a lot happier without him around."

"Why would Neal ever think that?" Peter asked, stunned and baffled -- and genuinely a little hurt, because ... had he messed up _that_ much? "What did I do that would make him think that?"

Elizabeth had that look again, the one that meant he'd missed some obvious-to-her nuance in the conversation and was teetering uncomfortably close to her personal border between "adorably obtuse" and "really needs a good kick in the pants". She sighed and rolled off the couch, then held out her hand. "Come on. Since Baby Neal's been waking up at five a.m. lately, we should sleep while the sleeping is good."

"Let's just hope he doesn't escape from the crib this time," Peter lamented.

"I seem to recall that naming him after a notorious escape artist was your idea in the first place, mister."

 

***

 

Peter had been prepared to spend a long time staring at the ceiling in the dark bedroom -- insomnia was one of the problems he'd struggled with over the last year and a half, and one of the reasons why he'd been drinking more -- but at some point he did fall asleep, until he was jerked out of a tangled and unpleasant dream, something involving Neal and a lot of blood, by the sound of El's ringtone.

He managed to drag himself to full wakefulness. Elizabeth sounded cheerful, at least, and the phone didn't appear to have awakened Baby Neal. The bedside clock read 4:03.

"Who is it?" Peter mumbled.

"Believe it or not," El said, taking the phone away from her mouth for a moment, "it's Mozzie."

Peter sat bolt upright. "Is Neal all right?"

"Don't worry. Mozzie just wanted to talk. Apparently he forgot about the time difference."

Peter flopped back down. It just figured. Mozzie was, no doubt, halfway around the world now, and _still_ making his life inconvenient.

He'd nearly drifted off to sleep when El shook his shoulder. "He wants to talk to you."

"Of course he does," Peter groaned, taking the phone. "Don't they have clocks wherever you are, Mozzie?"

"Why do you need to know where I am, Suit? Is this a trick question?" Lower: "Are you monitoring this call?"

"No, but I'm sure the NSA is." He regretted his flippancy when there was a long silence on the other end of the line. Peter sighed and sat up, running a hand through his sleep-scruffed hair. The light was on in the hallway now, and he heard El talking in her cheerful mommy voice to an apparently awake Baby Neal. "Mozzie? Are you still there?"

"No, and I was never here."

"I don't even know where 'here' is. For that matter, I don't know why we're having this conversation."

There was another silence, with what Peter was fairly sure were the cries of gulls in the background (ocean? he thought; island? and then told himself to stop it). Then Mozzie said, "How's the kid?"

Peter caught himself on a soft laugh. "He's great. Theo and Diana are doing well, too. She's settling into her new job in DC. Life treating you okay?"

"Can't complain," Mozzie said. "Well, no, of course I can complain." He hesitated for a moment. "Have you talked to our mutual friend at all?"

"No," Peter said, though something twisted inside him: regret, grief, guilt, worry; he wasn't sure of the exact emotion. And also, an upwelling of startled relief, because Mozzie saying it meant it was true, Neal was alive.

Mozzie huffed a small sigh. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I really think you ought to. He's been ... I don't even know what the word is that I want. Not himself. And as much as I hate to say it, I'm pretty sure part of the reason is you."

"You're worried about him," Peter said. He recognized that note in Mozzie's voice. "Is he going to do something stupid?" _Again,_ his mind filled in.

"Not that I'm specifically aware of," Mozzie said. "But it's _Neal."_ There was a wealth of fond exasperation in his tone.

"And he could be planning God knows what. Are you with him?"

"No, we had what I suppose you might call a minor tiff, and are presently in separate countries."

"That's a hell of a tiff."

"It's Neal," Mozzie said again. "In any case, I haven't been able to get in touch with him for the last few days. Which might mean nothing. But ..." Hesitation, very brief. "He hasn't been well, Peter."

It was never a good sign when Mozzie used his name. This time it was worry that twisted his gut, the familiar feeling of mingled concern and exasperation that was a feature of dealing with Neal. He hadn't felt it in a year and a half. "How do you mean, not well? Not well in what way?"

"Not well in any way." Mozzie sounded tired. "I can't get through. For whatever reason, he's always listened to you."

"I think you have a very exaggerated idea of how much influence I have with Neal." Peter was aware of Elizabeth in the doorway now, rocking Baby Neal slowly and leaning on the doorframe while she shamelessly eavesdropped.

"Don't let it go to your head, Suit." Mozzie's depressed tone rebounded a bit, sounding a little more like his old self. "And don't think I've forgiven your attempts to mold him into a mini-Suit. But when it comes down to it, he _does_ listen to you, even if he won't admit it."

"I don't know how to get in touch."

"I'll text you his number, under the condition that you never, ever tell him we had this conversation."

"Deal."

Mozzie hung up without saying goodbye.

Elizabeth came over and sat down next to him on the bed, leaning against him. "Did he tell you he's worried about Neal?"

"More or less." The phone chimed with an incoming text: not only a phone number, but also an address. "What time is it in France?"

"Middle of the morning, I think."

Peter hesitated, his fingers hovering over the phone, then dialed the number. After three rings it went to voicemail, with a generic message -- not Neal's voice, no indication of a name. He hung up immediately. Nerved himself. Dialed again. Hung up again, and rested his forehead against his wrist.

Elizabeth sat with him in silence for a time, rubbing his arm soothingly while she slowly rocked the sleeping toddler in her lap. Finally she said, "I think he'd be happy to hear your voice."

"I can't think what to say to him, El." He stared at the phone for awhile longer. Dialed the number again. Hung up on the voicemail.

"You want to go there."

"I can't just drop everything and fly to Paris," he said quickly, because damn it, he _had_ been thinking about it, and he needed to stop.

"You can if your friend needs you."

"All I have to go on is Mozzie's hunch." But Mozzie had always been good at those hunches, and he'd never brought Peter in as emergency Neal-wrangling backup unless the situation was dire. "El ..." 

"Do it," she urged. "I know you have the vacation time. As for the cost of the ticket at short notice, I'd be shocked if June wasn't willing to help us out."

"I'm not going to ask June to buy me a ticket to Paris to see Neal."

 

***

 

He didn't have to ask -- she bought one for him, and one for herself, leaving that night.

Elizabeth had called her, after it became obvious that Peter was, indeed, arranging time off. "She offered to buy one for me too, but I'm going to need to rearrange things at the business before I can leave. I'll be there in a few days, if you're still there. If not, do your best to talk Neal into coming here to see _us,_ if you can."

"I don't believe this," Peter sighed. "I know I always said I'd take you somewhere nice, but this is _really_ not the Parisian vacation I'd hoped for."

Everything felt out of control. He sleepwalked through his day at work, offloading cases onto other agents and leaving Jones in charge. It wasn't as hard as it would once have been; he'd been serious about sticking to his commitment as a nine-to-five worker because of Baby Neal.

As he drove home with half his mind still spinning in circles about Neal-the-adult, he thought about the fact that work really hadn't been the same at all since Neal ... left. He hadn't enjoyed much of anything in the months after Neal's supposed death, and he now realized that it was Baby Neal's birth that had pulled him out of a downward spiral of misery and depression. But working for the FBI had never regained the sparkle it had once had. He used to love his job, but it had become something he did to pay the bills. Oh, he still enjoyed aspects of it -- he would always be able to lose himself in a good puzzle. But after three years of working with Neal, being alternately annoyed and challenged by him, going back to everyday FBI work felt flat and uninspiring.

And of course, the elephant in the room was that Neal had died on a case, in danger he would never have been in if Peter hadn't put him there. If Peter hadn't failed to protect him. He'd worked hard, over that long year following Neal's death, to end the similar experiments that had sprung up at other FBI offices after the initial success of his partnership with Neal. He wasn't going to let some other smart, promising kid get killed in the field if he could help it.

But Neal hadn't actually been dead at all. And there was a lot about that, he now realized, that he'd been forcing himself not to examine.

_Why did you do it, Neal? Was working with me really such a terrible fate that you'd rather be dead?_

 

***

 

June picked Peter up from the house; with her Jaguar and driver, there would be no need for airport parking, or for Elizabeth to make a special trip. Peter hadn't seen June since Neal's funeral, although he knew she and Elizabeth still got together for lunch occasionally. She smiled and gave him a light hug when he slid into the leather backseat beside her.

"And how is parenthood treating you, Peter?"

"Incredible," he said. "Exhausting. Terrifying. I spend half my time wondering how I ever thought I could deal with a toddler when my fiftieth birthday is already in the rear-view mirror, and then I do something like this, and I wonder how much I'll miss in just the few days I'll be gone."

"You never stop feeling that way." She squeezed his hand, but there was a trace of melancholy in her voice, and Peter suspected they were both thinking about Neal at that moment.

"Have you talked to him at all?" he asked. "El said you weren't surprised when she called you."

"No," June said, "and no. I've known the truth, I think, about as long as you have. But he hasn't made any effort to contact me." She smiled slightly. "Mozzie, of course, I've stayed in touch with."

Peter felt relieved, and then guilty about his own relief, that it wasn't simply Neal avoiding _him._ Although ... it was looking more and more like Neal had been entirely on his own for that first long year, bereft completely of his usual support system. For someone as people-oriented as Neal could be, it must have been a sort of hell.

_One he voluntarily chose for himself, and chose to stay in._

Which, Peter now considered, didn't indicate anything good about Neal's state of mind. No wonder Mozzie was worried about him.


	3. Chapter 3

Peter slept intermittently on the flight, and stumbled blearily through Paris's Orly Airport in early afternoon, local time. June somehow managed to be a lot more suave and put together than anyone ought to be after spending seven and a half hours on a plane. Certainly a lot more than Peter himself felt. And she spoke the language, which was something he hadn't known until she began to casually and fluently converse with the attendant at the cab stand.

It hit him then, as he stood waiting for her to finish: for the first time in a year and a half, he was in the same city with Neal. Neal Caffrey -- or whatever he was calling himself now -- was _here,_ close enough that a short cab ride could take Peter to Neal's door.

He was going to see Neal again.

Peter took out his phone with hands that shook slightly, and tried Neal's number again. Voicemail, again. He still hadn't left a message. Couldn't think of anything to say.

"Peter."

It wasn't the first time June had said his name, he realized. He smiled apologetically. "Sorry. Tired."

"And distracted." She patted his arm. "I was thinking, Peter. I can get us checked into the hotel and freshen up a bit, if you'd like to go out and see Neal alone."

Instant panic washed over him. "I don't think it should be me. If either of us go, it should be you. You'd know what to say. I ... don't think I would."

"Peter." Her hand remained on his arm, holding him in place. "Remember that between the two of us, it was you that Mozzie called, not me. And that has nothing to do with what he is to me, or what I am to him, and everything to do with what _you_ are to him."

"Which is?" Peter asked warily.

"You, my dear, are the person who can make Neal listen when no one else can. And I don't think either of us would have dropped everything to leave New York if he didn't need that more than anything." She released his arm with a brisk pat, and turned to the porter. "Now, I've a cab for you and one for me, and I've selected a decent hotel for us. It was a favorite of mine and Byron's, when we used to stay here, a long time ago. And once you've had time to talk to that boy, I'll treat us all to dinner."

In his dazed state, Peter felt vaguely as if his life had been co-opted by a whirlwind. "All right," was all he could manage to say.

Panic hit again in the cab, along with a gnawing mix of emotions that he couldn't untangle. Thoughts rose from the depths of his subconscious and then submerged. 

He was going to see Neal.

It had been a year and a half. 

Neal was alive. 

Neal had opted for an extremely risky fake death, that had a good chance of actually killing him, when all he had to do was stick around for another couple of weeks until the deal Peter had procured for him went through.

Neal had every reason not to trust the FBI.

But the crux of it was that Neal hadn't trusted _him._

_We could have talked about it,_ Peter thought miserably, staring out the window at the low winter sun gleaming across the Parisian rooftops. From the freeway, it looked much like any other city to him, just another urban sprawl. _We could have dealt with it together. Hell, if you really wanted to run, if that was the only option you saw, I could've helped you. I did it once before._

But Neal hadn't trusted Mozzie either, Peter reminded himself, and _that_ was the real surprise. He hadn't trusted Mozzie or June, two people Peter would have said were much deeper in Neal's confidence than Peter himself.

_What in the world was going through your head, Neal?_

 

***

 

The neighborhood the cabbie took him to looked like a nice one -- luxury townhouses, conveniently located near shops and restaurants. Expensive-looking, Peter thought, having developed a good eye for the signs from living in New York, and any hope he'd had that Neal had gone straight died a small, quiet death. There was no way Neal was paying for _this_ on a regular working stiff's salary, even if he'd forged himself credentials to get into a good-paying job.

But, he reminded himself, it wasn't his business anymore, and it wasn't why he was here, either. He was here to check on Neal, not to _check up_ on him -- a small but critical distinction.

The building was swanky enough to have a doorman. Peter opened his mouth to say he was here to see Caffrey -- and then realized he had no idea what name Neal was using here, except it was almost certainly not that one. Mozzie hadn't mentioned it. Between the doorman's fragments of English and Peter's minimal handful of mangled French words, he managed to convey the apartment number and that he was a friend. "Friend" seemed to be the word that got him waved up, with a cheerful smile.

_So Neal doesn't have friends over much, and the doorman likes him and wants him to be happy,_ Peter thought. _That's very him, somehow._

He stood in front of the door for a long time. Ran his hand through his hair, then wished he'd gone with June to the hotel; having this conversation might be easier after a shower and a nap on a bed that wasn't moving.

Yeah, because giving himself even more reasons to put this off was a _great_ idea.

He took a slow, deep breath, and knocked on the door. Tentative at first, then a little firmer.

"Neal?"

No answer.

Peter knocked again, then flattened his hand against the door, spread his fingers out, and rested his forehead on the cool wood.

_He's gone. Skipped town._

Because that would be so very Neal too, wouldn't it? He'd realized Mozzie had contacted Peter, and cleared out. Peter might have missed him by hours.

And then he reminded himself that the doorman didn't know Neal was gone. The guy had seemed pretty sure that Neal was up there. 

_Okay, so maybe he's in the bathroom. Or taking a nap._

... Or actively avoiding him. Peter had a brief vision of Neal recognizing the knock and going off the balcony. He'd glimpsed a small courtyard behind the building, and had to restrain himself from running downstairs to apprehend Neal in the act of climbing over the courtyard wall.

El had once told him that he'd been chasing Neal so long that he didn't know how not to do it anymore. As much as Peter wanted to deny it, there was a little part of him that woke up at the thought of running Neal down in the courtyard, for a number of reasons. He'd spent a year thinking Neal was dead, and half a year ruthlessly squashing that part of himself that wanted to jump back into the game -- to cross an ocean, to hug the stuffing out of him and then yell at him for being dead; to _find him_ no matter where he went, because finding Neal was something he _did._

He hadn't meant to do it this time, he truly hadn't -- because he'd learned from his mistakes and he was, he really was, trying to do better. And yet, here he was, his hand pressed to the door as if he could feel Neal's heartbeat inside.

_He's gone. You know that he's gone._

On a whim, he tried the doorknob.

It turned.

Not locking the door? How very unlike Neal. _He really is gone, then,_ Peter told himself, and quietly, he opened the door.

He was struck, in the first instant, by how much this place resembled June's. Peter wondered if it was intentional, or Neal responding unconsciously to something that felt like "home" to him. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on a balcony, and even the furniture was arranged in a way that reminded Peter of June's penthouse.

Uncharacteristically for Neal, the place was something of a mess. It wasn't an absolute pigsty, just not the level of tidiness that Peter had come to associate with his former CI. There were dishes and empty wine bottles on the table; an expensive-looking suit jacket thrown careless and rumpled over the back of a chair; an easel with a half-completed painting, scattered tubes of paint -- some of which had fallen to the floor -- and paintbrushes in a jar of water or solvent. The lights were off, the room illuminated only by the setting sun gleaming through the tall windows.

"Neal?" Peter called, tapping on the half-open door.

There was every sign no one was home, and yet Peter didn't think that was the case. Decades in the FBI had given him a finely honed sixth sense for when a house was empty and when it wasn't. And this place didn't feel empty to him. Which meant Neal was around here somewhere.

_You think it's awkward showing up after a year and a half, try walking in on him in the bathroom ..._

"Neal?" he called again.

There was no answer. Peter closed the door behind him. Without thinking about it, he found himself crossing the floor in the direction towards where Neal's bedroom alcove would have been in June's apartment -- but the similarity threw him, this time, because the layout was different; there was a bathroom on that end of the apartment instead, large and opulent with a sunken tub. Various bottles were scattered on the edge of the sink, falling onto the floor -- over-the-counter drugs for the most part, with labels in French that were similar enough to English that he could decipher most of them: _aspirine, décongestionnant._

The sharp twinge of worry settled into a familiar place in his chest. Had there ever been a time in the years he'd known Neal when he _hadn't_ been worrying about him? Maybe that was part of what he'd been missing too, why the world had seemed so flat and empty; maybe he'd tried so hard to strangle his own desperate longing to run off to France and _just find Neal already_ that he'd ended up strangling something vital in himself along with it.

Meanwhile ... where _was_ Neal, anyway?

At the other end of the apartment, past the kitchen, a door with an ornate handle stood half open. It was dim inside, the curtains drawn. And it smelled wrong, a sour taint of sweat and illness.

Peter had been to too many crime scenes not to have a split-second pause, a moment of limbo when not seeing could still let him pretend there was nothing awful to see, before he flicked on the light.

He took it in like a snapshot, one part of his brain coolly and dispassionately analyzing as if it _was_ a crime scene: a mess of tangled sheets spilling onto the floor; wastebasket tipped over; empty bottles of water, wine, and sports drinks scattered on the bedside table and the floor. His eyes did a quick scan of the room and then snapped back to the bed, recognizing belatedly that it wasn't just tangled sheets he was looking at; it was sheets tangled around a body, spilling half on and half off the bed. Gray silk pajamas, stained and rumpled; dark mess of tousled hair.

Neal.

Peter crossed the room so fast it might as well have been a single bound, his heart a lump of ice. But Neal stirred just as Peter reached for him, flinching upright with a sudden galvanized jerk. He was flushed, his eyes opening wide, glassy with dilated pupils. His lips were dry and cracked. He stared at Peter for a moment, and then said, "Oh," in a dry rasp of a voice and closed his eyes again, starting to ooze bonelessly to the side.

"Neal!" Peter caught him, then placed a hand against the side of his face, feeling the heat baking off him. A year of caring for a baby had given him a new skill he'd never had before: the ability to recognize, more or less, the relative height of a fever by feeling a person's skin. And Neal was _hot._ "Neal, look at me."

Neal made uncoordinated flailing motions, trying feebly to brush Peter off. His eyes cracked open, squinting against the light. "What," he said.

"Yeah, that's it. Look at me, Neal. Stay with me."

Neal's brows drew together, slowly, in a puzzled frown. He ran the tip of his tongue across his cracked lips, and said faintly, "This is a weird hallucination. I liked the ones with Kate better."

In spite of his worry, Peter was startled into a laugh. "It's me, Neal. I'm here." He brushed a hand across Neal's forehead, feeling the dry heat. "How long have you been sick? And what are you sick _with?_ Do you know?"

Neal blinked glassy eyes at him. ".... Peter?" he said after a moment.

"Never mind." Peter didn't like the way Neal's breath rattled in his chest, the labored wheeze when he inhaled. Still, dehydration was probably the worst of his problems right now. "Stay there," he ordered, and, leaving Neal propped in a half-slumped heap against the side of the bed, went into the kitchen to fill a glass with water. He took this back to the bedroom. 

Neal watched him approach, blinking sleepily, and drank as Peter held the glass for him. When Peter took it away, he said, in a tone that was a little less tentative but no less baffled, "Peter?"

"Glad you remember my name. How sick are you, Neal?"

"I ..." Neal broke into a dry, hacking cough; Peter supported him until he was done. "I didn't think it was too bad. Bronchitis. I had it before."

"Got antibiotics or anything?"

Neal shook his head, and then winced.

"I'm going to change the sheets and get you back up on the bed, then."

He found clean sheets in a closet, as well as a set of clean pajamas. Neal allowed himself to be manhandled and propped against a wall while Peter stripped the bed and changed it; he watched it all with a mild, quizzical expression, occasionally giving weak, dry coughs. 

"Here," Peter said, crouching to deposit the clean pajamas in his lap. "I think you'd probably rather change without an audience, but I can give you a hand if you need one."

"No, I ..." Neal started to raise his hand, then let it drop back on the pile of silk fabric in his lap. "Am I in Paris?"

"Yes," Peter said, startled and worried all over again. Neal seemed reasonably coherent, but there were bright spots of color high on his cheekbones, and he barely had the strength to sit up. It was clear that he was still very sick.

"And you're ... also in Paris."

"Good thing too, right?" Peter pointed out. "Change into those and I'll get you something else to drink."

He soon determined that the options were water or ... water. The refrigerator was completely empty except for a box of restaurant leftovers that were clearly long past their prime; the only other thing he found was half a dried-out baguette on the countertop. Alcohol, on the other hand ... there was a wine rack that was still half stocked. Which might simply be Neal being Neal, except for the numerous empty wine bottles and about a half-dozen wine glasses that hadn't been washed.

Peter leaned on the sink for a minute with his head down, gripping the edge of it tightly. _So you let it come to this, Mozzie? You couldn't call me sooner?_ But no, that wasn't fair; he thought of his own sleepless nights, and the times when he'd finish off a six-pack of beer a night for weeks at a time, leaving El clearly unhappy about it but equally uncertain how to help him.

Stubborn and miserable. He could relate. No wonder Neal got sick, though, if this was how he'd been living.

Peter refilled the water glass and came back to the bedroom to find that Neal had managed to change, but the effort had left him drooping like a wilted houseplant.

"I can do it," Neal snapped, flailing at him when Peter reached out to help him to the bed.

"Can you, now? Let me see."

Neal's efforts to get up resulted in a long and painful-sounding coughing fit. He took a few sips from the glass Peter held in front of him, and then acquiesced to letting Peter help him to the bed, where he melted into the clean sheets.

"Drink all of that," Peter ordered as Neal sipped desultorily on the glass of water, and passed him a couple of Tylenol and a dose from a bottle he'd managed to decode as cough medicine. "When was the last time you ate something?"

"Dunno. Sounds like work."

"Right," Peter said. He took out his phone. "I'm going to call June and have her come over with something for you to eat, and us too, since I'd really rather not catch whatever you have."

Neal's eyes went wide. "June's here? In France?"

"And she'll be _here_ soon."

Neal stared at him for awhile, then sank into the bed as if he'd lost his ability to cope.

Leaving him to nap, Peter sketched the broad outlines of the situation for June, and while he waited for her, he worked absently on tidying the apartment while getting Elizabeth caught up in somewhat more detail. He talked her out of coming to Paris for the time being. "Look, we don't want Baby Neal to get sick, right? And I don't think Neal would appreciate having a bunch of people hovering over him. I'm having enough trouble getting him to accept me and June."

"He is going to be all right, though?"

"I'll make sure that he is," Peter said, definitively.

 

***

 

June showed up about an hour later with a takeout carton of soup for Neal, and a three-course dinner for herself and Peter in tidy little carry-out boxes. She spent some time in the bedroom with Neal. Peter discreetly left them alone while finishing his cleanup job on the apartment. 

When she came out of the bedroom, June's eyes were suspiciously bright. "That boy," she said.

Peter was tempted to say something about Neal needing a keeper, but that wasn't true, not exactly. Neal had been miserable; the signs were all around him. It hadn't escaped his notice, while he was helping Neal into bed, that Neal was a lot thinner than he had been in New York. He'd been isolated in misery here ... and _why,_ was the thing Peter kept going around and around on. 

"Do you know why he'd do this?" he asked June. Once, he'd thought he had more of an idea of what went on in Neal's head than anyone else in Neal's life. Now, he thought he might only ever have been fooling himself that he knew Neal at all.

"Which part of it?"

"All of it." Peter waved a hand around him, trying to indicate the apartment, Paris, and this whole fool plan of Neal's. "I can put together parts, but not everything. If he wanted to run that badly, why didn't he do it years ago? And if he _didn't_ want to run, why would he do it at all?"

"I think the person you should ask is Neal."

"Who is conveniently asleep," Peter muttered, and went back to his veal steak.

June dug out a travel cribbage board and a deck of cards, and taught him to play -- then proceeding to thoroughly trounce him. She offered to switch to poker but Peter decided to stick with a game that was less likely to result in him losing every bit of travel money he'd brought with him.

During the evening they took turns going in and checking on Neal. For the most part he slept, rousing reluctantly to eat a little soup, drink a little water, and take more Tylenol. His fever definitely wasn't better, and Peter hated the listless way he was coughing, as if he'd lost the energy to do even that.

Unfortunately, this was another thing he'd had practice at, over his year of being a dad -- making the determination of when it was worth going to the emergency room. It was different with adults than with babies, of course. But as the evening wore on, and Neal's breathing grew more labored, and his responses to their attempts to rouse him more incoherent, Peter could see June was thinking the same thing.

"Hospital?" he murmured, and she nodded.

Peter didn't bother trying to get Neal dressed. Neal would hate being out in public in his pajamas, but trying to get him into something more suitable simply for the sake of appearances was a lot more trouble than it was worth. Instead, he got shoes on him, and bundled him up in a wool coat he found in the closet.

Neal didn't appear to quite grasp what was happening, but he was able to walk, slowly, leaning on Peter. June had already procured a cab, and the doorman -- someone different than the afternoon shift -- helped Peter get him down the stairs and into the backseat.

In the cab, Neal wilted on Peter's shoulder, coughing occasionally and panting shallowly in between.

"How do you get yourself into these things," Peter murmured, and then nudged him. "Hey, Neal. They're going to ask me questions at the hospital. What's your name? Here, I mean."

"No need to ask," June said, from Neal's other side. She smiled and held up a billfold.

"You stole his wallet," Peter said in appreciation. He hadn't even thought of that.

"Apparently ..." She opened the billfold and held it up to the window, tilted to the passing street lights. "It looks as if he's going by Daniel ... Perdue."

What an odd collision of past and present. _Perdue means lost,_ Neal had said to Peter once, a long time ago. Neal had taken it, then, as a cry for help from Kate. Was that what it meant now? Or did Neal simply like the echoes, reflecting back from his past life?

And Daniel. Danny. Peter wondered if, even in New York, Neal might have answered as readily to Danny as he did to Neal. He'd been Danny Brooks longer than he'd been Neal Caffrey, after all.

June wore an odd smile. "I think you should see his middle name." She passed the billfold across Neal so Peter could look at it.

Peter held it up to the light. He got a sting of nostalgic pain at the sight of Neal's driver's license photo; it was sharply similar to the one that had been on his old consultant badge, that Peter had never quite been able to bring himself to throw away. Then he saw the name beside it and laughed in spite of himself.

"Daniel _Peter_ Perdue." He glanced down at the top of Neal's tousled head. "You had to steal my name, too? Talk about hiding in plain sight."

"It's always possible he expected you to find him," June pointed out.

Clues on top of clues. Peter felt as if he'd been handed a bunch of puzzle pieces, but he still couldn't identify the picture they made.

 

***

 

They ended up at the hospital for some six hours or so, while Neal (legally Danny Perdue) was hooked up to intravenous IV fluids and antibiotics. They'd diagnosed him as badly dehydrated, as well as suffering from a mild, treatable case of pneumonia. Peter knew all this by way of June, who was once again doing most of the talking for both of them.

And there was a lot of waiting. June hadn't brought her cribbage board, but she _had_ brought the deck of cards. By the time they left, Peter was down a hundred bucks or so, and Neal was notably more alert, enough to (predictably) complain about being taken out of the house without being given a chance to change into something more appropriate.

"Neal, you could barely sit up. Or breathe."

Neal gave him a weak glare. He now had antibiotics, heavy-duty cough medicine, an inhaler, and strict instructions to rest, drink a lot of liquids, and eat when he felt like it. Peter was trying very hard not to think about how things might have gone down if he'd been just a day later getting to Paris. He told himself that Neal wasn't simply going to hole up in his fancy apartment until he died of pneumonia. _It's the 21st century, not the medieval period._

Still ... this was Neal. If anyone was going to die in a garret of a tragic wasting disease ...

Neal was quiet on the cab ride, but he'd perked up a little more by the time they got back to his apartment. He still had to pause every couple of steps on the stairs to catch his breath, though. "So what _are_ you two doing here?" he wanted to know, during one of their stops.

"Playing a hunch," Peter said. Mozzie had saved Neal's life, after all. It was the least Peter could do to keep his secret.

"Did Mozzie call you?" Neal asked suspiciously.

.... damn. He'd forgotten how sharp Neal was, even when sick.

"Why don't we get you home, dear, so you can sit down," June interjected with diplomatic timing, sliding her hand under his elbow.

Peter didn't think it was just his imagination that Neal flinched a little at the word "home". This place wasn't home for him. _So where is home for you, Neal? Because it sure isn't New York ... or, if it is, why did you sever ties with us and leave?_

Neal was too out of breath to say anything, though, and by the time they reached the top of the stairs, he wasn't interested in doing anything other than flopping limply on the bed. Peter roused him, over his hoarse and irritable protests, to feed him cough medicine.

"I've just realized I haven't got a guest bed," Neal mumbled into the pillow. "There's a couch."

"That's all right. I'm pretty sure we've got a hotel." 

He left Neal slumped in an exhausted heap, apparently already asleep. June, who had been waiting in the doorway, placed her hand on his arm as he passed her. "Peter, you should sleep."

"One of us should stay here. I don't mind taking that shift."

"I've slept on a few couches in my time," June said with a playful lilt to her voice. 

"I don't mind. I'm so jet-lagged I probably won't sleep much anyway." He managed a tired smile. "You get to come back and deal with Neal once he wakes up and thinks he can do twice as much as he's physically capable of."

June laughed. "Ah. Pure self-interest. I understand."

But she didn't argue, which let him know she was willing to acknowledge that a man nearly thirty years her junior could handle a night on a couch somewhat better than she could.

After she left, he was a little disconcerted to find he was still too wired to sleep. His internal clock told him it was midmorning, the time of day when he tended to be most active and intellectually engaged. His body, meanwhile, was telling him he hadn't slept in two days, except for restless catnaps on the plane, and Mozzie had woken him after only a few hours of sleep the night before.

He thought about calling Mozzie to let him know Neal was all right, but didn't feel up to dealing with that conversation just now.

Instead he wandered into the doorway of Neal's room. The light was out, but as his eyes adjusted slowly to the dark, he made out Neal's shape: twisted under the covers, one leg thrown out. Neal had always tended to sleep like a restless toddler, a comparison Peter never planned to mention to him. (Well. Maybe not unless he _really_ asked for it.) Even from here, Peter could hear the harsh tenor of his breathing. Better than earlier, but still heavy and labored.

Neal jerked himself awake with a coughing fit. It sounded painful; he doubled up for a minute or two, then fumbled without looking on the bedside table for the glass of water Peter had left there.

"Little to the left," Peter said.

Neal flinched, then got his hand on it, and pushed himself up enough to drink. "Time is it?" he mumbled.

"You haven't been out for very long."

Neal propped himself up on his elbows. "Thought you'd left," he said hoarsely. "You and June."

"Nah, we split up the lifeguarding duties." Peter found that weariness was hitting him harder than he'd expected. He came over and sat down on the edge of the bed.

"There's nothing to lifeguard." Neal had been lying on his stomach, but now he rolled onto his side and rested his head on his arm. "I mean, I feel like crap and I know I'm running a fever, but I'm not ..."

"Hallucinating Kate?"

Neal groaned and covered his face with his hand. "What did I say?"

"Nothing terribly embarrassing," Peter said. "Nothing I won't use for blackmail fodder later."

Neal snorted a little laugh, then tensed as it threatened to develop into a coughing fit, but managed to stifle it. For a minute or two, the only sound was the soft rasp of his breathing; then he said, "How do you like Paris?"

"I haven't seen much of it yet except the airport, the ER, and the inside of your apartment."

Neal winced. "Sorry."

"Yeah, you got sick just to inconvenience me. How thoughtless."

Peter's eyes had adjusted to the dark enough by now that he could see Neal frown in the lamplight coming in from the living room. "I still don't understand why you're here."

"I ..." Peter hesitated. He'd promised Mozzie he wouldn't rat him out, and besides, Mozzie had only been the catalyst for something he was now realizing he should have done anyway, a long time ago.

While he was still thinking it through, Neal gave a small huff of a laugh. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You always find me."

"It took me a while this time. And maybe a sorely needed kick in the pants."

"Elizabeth?" Neal guessed.

He'd meant Mozzie, actually, but now that Neal mentioned it ... "She told me I was being stupid. Not in so many words, of course."

"Of course not," Neal agreed.

"She misses you," Peter said, and, pushing himself forward: " _We_ miss you. All of us. June and the FBI gang, too. You left a hole, Neal. You ..." He floundered on emotions that he didn't want to deal with -- had been very successfully not dealing with, until he came here and everything tore open. He hadn't meant to come in here and interrogate Neal, not in Neal's current condition. But the question came out before he could stop himself, with a world of pain in it. "Why'd you do it? Why _that?"_

Silence. Neal's face was a study in shadow, eyes gazing into the dark. "The Panthers," he said at last.

"The Panthers?" Peter hadn't even thought about them in months. They were a closed case. End of story.

"I painted a target on myself when I went undercover with them. They'd have hunted down every last person in my life if I hadn't taken myself out of the picture."

This was so far outside anything Peter had been thinking about that he didn't even know how to respond. "They're in prison," he said.

"So was Keller when he had you kidnapped."

"I know that, but ..." It just didn't go together. Again he had that sense of pushing together puzzle pieces, trying to make them fit. "You could have talked to me. We could've arranged something. Bodyguards, Witsec, moving across the country, at the very least letting me _help_ you with this. Neal, I can't believe you're telling me that the only solution you could think of was faking your own death and making your friends, your _family,_ think you were dead. That you didn't _trust_ ..."

He trailed off, realizing his hands were shaking and he was close to shouting. He hadn't come in here to do that. He clasped one hand over the other and tried to steady his breathing.

"Peter ..." Neal's soft, raspy voice sounded helpless. "You're right, okay? I don't know. At the time, it made a lot of sense. Looking back on it now ... I don't understand why it seemed so sensible then. No, more than that. Inevitable. Like my whole life, or at least my life with you, had been leading up to that. And the Panthers were part of it, they really were. But you're also right. And the thing is, Peter, I don't have an answer for you. I don't know why."

"You were dead," Peter said, gazing at the wall, his face turned away. Even in the dark, he felt too exposed.

"I know. I guess I didn't think ..." Neal coughed raggedly, and went silent for a moment. "Didn't think it would matter all that much," he said at last.

"Didn't think it would _matter?"_ Peter gave a disbelieving laugh with no humor in it. "Neal. You were _dead."_

The enormity of it was too much. He'd never been good at talking things out, and he couldn't find the words to explain how the light and the color had gone out of his world when he lost Neal. He couldn't think of any way to say it that Neal would understand. Nothing that wouldn't make him sound like a delusional idiot, seeing Neal on streetcorners or sitting at his old desk, just because having him gone was too much to bear ...

He put a hand over his eyes, and was startled to find his face was wet. He hadn't even noticed that he was crying.

"Peter," Neal said.

He rolled over and reached up, and Peter froze for just an instant, startled. Then he leaned down and Neal caught him by the shoulders, pulled him in. Neal was thinner than he'd ever been, but when Peter hugged him so hard it made him choke on a cough, he fisted his hands into Peter's jacket and held on. He was still hot with fever, pushing his face into Peter's shoulder.

"Missed you," Neal murmured.

"Missed you, too," Peter said, his wet cheek pressed against Neal's hair.


	4. Chapter 4

Neal slept most of the following day and by evening had rallied enough to shuffle around the apartment in a bathrobe and sit up at the table to eat. He also complained vociferously about Peter's refusal to give him wine with his light meal of toast and soup.

"Juuuune, Peter's being cruel."

"He's being prudent, and I agree with him." She patted his arm to take the sting out of it. "You're not well."

"I'd be better with a glass of a nice chianti," Neal said hopefully.

"You've been spending too much time around Mozzie," Peter groused.

" _Speaking_ of Mozzie." Neal looked around and finally located his phone where Peter's cleaning frenzy had left it on the countertop, plugged into its charger -- the battery had been completely dead. "I _know_ he had something to do with you two showing up here. He can run, but he can't hide."

"And are you planning to tell him you nearly died of a preventable case of pneumonia?" June inquired mildly.

"I didn't almost die," Neal muttered. He set the phone down. "On second thought, maybe I'll talk to Mozzie when he gets back from Greece."

Despite himself, Peter's ears perked up. "Greece? Is that where he is?"

"Not doing anything illegal," Neal said quickly. "It's something to do with endangered bats."

"And the fact that Greece is full of priceless antiquities is a total coincidence."

"I don't think Mozzie would deface a priceless historical monument," Neal protested.

"You know there's still a Yap island coin in El's rose garden, right?"

Neal looked thoughtful.

"I'm just saying," Peter went on, "that if I see a news story about some of those lady statue column-things disappearing from the Acropolis, I know where I'll look first."

"Caryatids," Neal said with a wince. "They're called caryatids."

"Whatever. You knew what I meant."

He went out on the balcony to call El and catch her up on recent events. It was midday there; he could hear the sound of the usual Burke Premier Events bustle in the background. "I'm so glad he's going to be okay," she said. "You haven't mentioned if you've had any luck talking him into coming back with you."

"I'm not even trying. He has a life here."

"Does he?" she asked.

This made Peter pause. She ... had a point. So far, he'd seen no signs of what, exactly, Neal was doing with his life these days. It was clear that Neal didn't have a regular job; he hadn't mentioned taking sick time or missing days of work. No friends had stopped by looking for him, or called to see how he was. As far as Peter could tell, what Neal was doing with his life since he'd left New York was sitting in his beautiful, expensive apartment and drinking.

And that made Peter realize he hadn't thought about the FBI even once since he'd been here. Hadn't missed it. Hadn't wondered how his cases were getting along without him. What did that say about _his_ life?

"Still there, hon?"

"I'm here," he said. "Sorry. Just thinking about things. I don't know how much longer I'll be. I can't wait to see you and Neal again." He paused. Ran it back in his head. "You know ..."

"I know," she said, laughing. "It seemed like a good idea at the time, but this is going to be terribly confusing now that Neal is back in our lives."

"Well, his middle name is Robert, after my dad. Kid looks like a Robby, don't you think?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'll think about it. In the meantime, should I come there, do you think?"

"I guess it depends on how much you want a Paris vacation."

She burst out laughing this time, a delighted sound that Peter hadn't realized until this moment how much he'd missed, just in the two days since he'd last seen her. "Oh, twist my arm, why don't you."

They wrapped up the conversation, and he hung up and let his head drop against the back of the patio chair. It was cold on the balcony, especially now that the sun was going down, and he was starting to become aware of how tired he really was. A few hours' sleep on a couch didn't exactly cut it after two nights without.

But ... he felt _good._ Elizabeth was coming here, and Neal was right inside the sliding glass door to the balcony, as if he'd never been --

\-- dead --

\-- _gone._ Peter had to shake off a haunting sense that the other shoe was about to drop: maybe Neal's illness was about to take a drastic and tragic turn, maybe he'd wake up in bed next to El and realize the last two days had been a dream ...

_Quit borrowing trouble,_ he chastised himself. _You're here. Neal's here. For once, stop thinking so far ahead and just live in the moment._

He pried himself out of the chair and went back inside, crossing the threshold from the cold back to the warmth and light. 

"How's Elizabeth?" Neal asked.

Peter started to reach for one of the bottles of wine, then thought better of it and poured himself a glass of water instead. He wanted a drink -- wine would do, if there wasn't any beer -- but had a feeling, in his current state of exhaustion, that it would put him like a light. "She's good. She's planning on flying out in a couple of days. Looking forward to seeing the city, and you."

"Here?" Neal asked, looking abruptly like a deer caught in headlights. "She's coming here?"

"Any reason why she shouldn't?"

"No, just ... _why?"_

"Because it's Paris?" Peter said. "And because she wants to see you. There doesn't need to be a reason other than that." Water splashed around his hand. He looked down and realized he'd overfilled the glass, pouring over the sides.

June, reading quietly on the sofa, looked up with a smile. "Peter, when did you last sleep?"

"I slept," Peter protested. "Last night. Some."

"She's right," Neal said. "Peter ... go get some sleep. Actual sleep. In a bed. I'm not going to keel over dead if you two aren't here to keep an eye on me."

Neal seemed to have gotten past whatever it was that bothered him about the idea of Elizabeth coming to Paris. In fact, the slight awkwardness between himself and Peter, that had persisted all day, seemed to have been smoothed away. They said their goodbyes and made promises to meet up for breakfast (with Neal insisting that he'd be up for it, he knew a great little place right around the corner, etc).

"He was smiling too much," Peter said, in the cab. "Did it seem to you like he was smiling too much?"

There was a slight hesitation, he thought, before June smiled and gave his arm a little squeeze. "Peter, he's right. You look exhausted. If Elizabeth were here, she'd tell you to stop second-guessing yourself. Neal's going to be all right."

If nothing else, both of them were certainly right about the exhaustion. He was almost walking into walls by the time he got up to their floor. June had gotten them separate rooms, to his relief. Taking a shower felt heavenly, and also made him aware of how tired he really was. He nearly fell asleep standing up. He'd meant to order room service, but decided to crash for awhile first.

 

***

 

Peter didn't know how much later it was when he woke up. He opened his eyes to a dark room and a sudden, startled sense that the thing which had been eluding him about Neal's earlier behavior had just clicked into place. Except, as he surfaced from sleep, the solution darted tantalizingly out of reach.

He lay in bed, still tired but frustratingly wide awake. There was something ... something that hadn't fit earlier. Something about Neal's behavior, his sudden change from worried to smiling, and the way June had brushed off his concerns, because she _shouldn't_ have, she knew Neal as well as he did ...

_But she's a con artist too._ He forgot that, often. And he also forgot that people like Neal -- and June -- didn't quite think the way everyone else did.

"He's going to leave again," Peter said aloud.

He sat up and fumbled for his pants. As he headed for the lobby, still buttoning his shirt under his coat, he told himself he was being ridiculous. It was the middle of the night in midwinter, and Neal was just getting over a case of pneumonia. He wasn't just going to ...

Of course he would. Of _course_ he would. If he felt like he had to.

That trapped look, when Peter had told him Elizabeth was coming here ...

_You're doing it again,_ he told himself fiercely, waiting on the curb and shivering in the wind as the concierge flagged down a cab for him. _You're always either accidentally chasing him off, or running after him to drag him back. Coming here was a mistake. I knew it was, but no one believed me ..._

But if he hadn't come here, Neal might still be suffering in the throes of a self-inflicted health crisis. Peter couldn't find it in himself to regret his decision. In fact, now that he was a little more alert, he felt like an idiot for running off in the middle of the night.

_You're going to get to his apartment and find him fast asleep. You're being ridiculous._

There was too much water under the bridge, though. Too many memories of showing up one step behind Neal, finding nothing but an empty apartment or an abandoned hotel room.

At Neal's building, the doorman waved him on up. Neal's apartment was dark. Peter hesitated for a long while before tapping on the door. There was, of course, no answer.

_Because he's asleep._

It was hard to shake the sense of deja vu, as if he'd looped right back around to exactly where he'd been when he arrived in Paris, knocking on the door of a maybe-empty apartment, knowing nothing about Neal's state of mind or if he was even still here.

Peter was fairly sure that Neal had locked the door behind them when he left. Tired as he'd been, he had a sharp memory for details, and he was reasonably confident that he remembered the sound of the lock snicking home after the door closed. Still, he tried the knob.

It opened.

Something painful tugged like a fishhook under his breastbone. He stepped into the dark apartment, fought a quick battle with himself over waking Neal, and then flicked on the light.

The place looked just like it had when he'd left -- and much tidier than when he'd first seen it. But ... that sixth sense, the one he'd always trusted, the one that had told him the apartment was occupied before, was now telling him it was empty.

He crossed the room. Neal's bedroom door stood open. Peter didn't have to turn on the light to see that the bed was unoccupied, but he flicked it on anyway.

Nothing was visibly missing. But, then, Neal traveled light. He always had.

Peter cursed softly, and slammed his fist into the doorframe.

_Damn it, Neal, you couldn't have waited another day or two ..._

He wondered if his own arrival, followed by his cheerful, exuberant, _stupid_ announcement of Elizabeth's impending visit, had felt like one cage bar after another slamming down around Neal. Wondered if he should have insisted that June come alone, if she'd have been able to handle Neal with a lighter touch. If there was anything he could have done, anything he could have said differently, reassurances he could have given ...

_It's not too late. I could still try to catch up ..._ Maybe there were clues in the apartment to where Neal might have gone. He was good at hiding his tracks, but Peter was also good, very good, at finding him.

He'd had plenty of practice.

But, no. _No._ He'd told himself he wouldn't do it again, and then he'd done it, and things had ended exactly like he'd been afraid they would. He had convinced himself it was for Neal's benefit, and now he wondered if he'd only ever been lying to himself, if he'd been thinking not of Neal's welfare, but of his own grief and desperate longing to see his friend. This time, he was going to respect Neal's wishes if it killed him.

He walked slowly back into the living room. The apartment's sterile tidiness felt like a rebuke, now. At least before it had looked lived in. Now it was cleaned up and ready for the next tenant.

Peter sank down on the sofa and buried his face in his hands.

He was still sitting there when a soft voice from the doorway said, "How in the world do you _do_ it?"

Peter jerked in surprise. He looked over his shoulder.

Neal was standing in the open door, his shoulders slightly hunched. He was fully dressed and carrying a small travel bag.

"Neal," Peter said. He started to stand up. Sat back down. Neal was hovering half in and half out of the room, and it seemed that anything Peter did might tip the balance the wrong way.

Then Neal came in and shut the door. He dropped the bag just inside.

"You, uh ..." Peter cleared his throat. He hadn't been crying. Not exactly. Still, he was feeling a little more emotional than usual. "I thought you'd left."

"Yeah, and I can't figure out how you know that. I honestly can't. It's like you have some sort of weird psychic ability that's tuned to my wavelength." Neal stifled a harsh cough in his fist. "I'd ask if you want a drink, but you'd probably just tell me wine isn't good for someone in my condition --"

"Well, it'd be true --"

"So I'll offer you tea instead. It's all Mozzie's, so God knows what's in it."

"Sure," Peter said, feeling a little dazed. "Tea is all right. You want help with it?"

Neal took a few steps toward the kitchen, then swayed a little and reached for the table to steady himself. "Uh, yeah. Maybe I'll sit down for a minute."

"You're getting over being seriously ill," Peter pointed out. He located a teakettle and the box of miscellaneous tea bags and loose-leaf teas that Neal directed him to.

"Mmmm." Neal rested his forehead on his closed fist, elbow propped on the table. "You see any Tylenol over there anywhere?"

Peter fetched it from the bedroom and poured him a glass of water. Neither of them said anything until Peter sat down at the table with two steaming cups, and pushed one toward Neal.

"I left," Neal said quietly. He was staring at the table, head still propped on his hand. He didn't reach for the cup.

"Yeah, I noticed."

"I made it all the way to the _roseraie_ downstairs. You know this place has a rose garden, just for residents? Tucked in for the winter right now, of course, but they told me when I rented it that it'll be lovely in the spring. Even then, I wasn't sure if I'd be here to see it. I've moved around a lot in the last year or so."

Peter wasn't sure what to say. Again he had the fear that saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, could tip the balance one way or another. Neal went on after a moment, "I made it all the way downstairs, and then I wasn't feeling that great -- _don't_ say anything -- so I decided to sit out there for a while, since it was my last chance to see it. I really enjoyed sitting out there last fall, so I thought I'd sit for awhile and catch my breath and think about things."

"You know it's like thirty-five degrees out there."

"You know they use Celsius here, right?" Neal countered. He wrapped his hand around the steaming tea cup, as if stirred by the memory of being cold. He was still wearing his wool coat, though the apartment felt warm to Peter. "And so, I sat there for a while, and while I was sitting there, the light went on in my apartment. And I knew it was you. It _had_ to be you. I knew you'd be here, of course, just not ... now."

"You leave the door unlocked for me?"

"Yes," Neal admitted with a slight smile. "No point in making things difficult for you tomorrow."

"Other than the you being gone part."

"Yes, well ..." Neal stared at his cup of tea, rotating it slowly on the tabletop. "I realized something while I was sitting down there, namely that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing on a bench in a dead rose garden, freezing my feet off in the middle of the night. I don't know why I packed that bag. I don't know why leaving seemed so urgent. Everything was simply too much, and I needed to get out. That's all I can really say."

"If it's any consolation," Peter said after a moment, "I don't know why I came here tonight, either. It just felt like something I needed to do."

Neal snorted. "We're two of a kind. Sometimes I wonder why anybody lets us out on our own."

Peter laughed softly, and sipped at his tea. He'd never been fond of tea -- it was more Elizabeth's thing, while he was definitely a coffee guy himself. But the warmth was welcome. And it gave him something to fill the gap in the conversation.

"You came back," he said at last.

"Don't read too much into it," Neal said. "I don't know why I did that, either."

Peter opened his mouth, but stopped himself before any more words could escape. _Don't over-analyze. Not right now._

But ... Neal hadn't walked away; he'd walked back. That was a decision he'd made for himself. No anklet or handcuffs were holding him. He could have gone literally anywhere. And he'd chosen, instead, to be here.

Neal, meanwhile, poked at his teacup. "Something you should know, though, Peter. I may not be a model of well-reasoned life decisions, but ... I can tell you that ..." He trailed off, and as the silence stretched, Peter wasn't sure if he was going to continue. Before Peter could find a new conversation topic, though, Neal said quietly, "Sometimes the more apologies you have to make, the easier it is to just start over instead."

"You don't owe me an apology."

"Yeah, I do." Neal's attention was still fixed on the teacup, swiveling it first one way, then the other, rippling the amber liquid inside. "I don't think I'd realized -- and you know, talking to Mozzie over the last six months, I _should_ have, but I didn't think ..."

"Neal." Peter reached across the table and closed his hand over Neal's wrist. "I'm not angry."

"Which is immaterial in whether I owe you an apology or not." But Neal was smiling faintly.

"If we're passing blame around," Peter said, as long nights of half-drunken self-recrimination rose up to choke him, "there's plenty on this side of the table too. I didn't protect you from the FBI -- hell, if I hadn't underestimated the danger, if I hadn't believed the damn _system_ would protect you rather than screw you over, things might not've come to the point where you felt like you had to do it in the first place --"

Neal twisted his hand in Peter's grip to squeeze back. "Peter. Model of good life decisions here, remember? Don't blame yourself for things I did. That's a good way to make yourself crazy."

"So don't beat yourself up over doing what you felt like you had to. Even if," Peter added, "I really would appreciate it if next time you'd talk to me _before_ deciding to fake your own death. Those are words which I never thought I'd be saying, by the way."

Neal laughed and ended up doubled over in a harsh fit of coughing. When it trailed off, he rested his forehead in his palm.

"Head still hurt?"

"I think I just want to go to bed and deal with all of this tomorrow."

"I don't mind taking the couch again."

"Peter, no." Neal gave him a light shove. "Go back to your hotel -- and if I know June, she picked out a halfway decent one. Sleep long enough you stop looking like the walking dead. And then we'll get breakfast in the morning. Or lunch, if we all sleep in."

"You'll still be here," Peter said, and looked him in the eyes, a silent challenge. _You once said you'd never lie to me._ They were, he knew, long past that now; there was more than enough deception and heartbreak on both sides. And yet ... they both had to find stable ground somewhere, to start building again.

And Neal met his eyes, tired but determined. "Yes, Peter. I will be."

"See you then," Peter said, and he even kept his voice light -- as if it was never hard, had never been hard. But trust had to be offered if it were going to be given.

"Good night, Peter."

In the cab on the way back to the hotel, Peter thought about all the things he hadn't said ... yet. The fact that he was thinking about retiring from the FBI, for one. It hadn't really solidified in his head until getting away from it all, and realizing that he didn't mind not going back.

He wondered what Neal would think of the idea of starting some kind of consulting business. Not right now, of course. But maybe someday.

_Let's take one step at a time, why don't we?_ There were a few problems with that. For one thing, Neal was legally dead.

And there was no telling how Neal would take that kind of offer. It wasn't something Peter wanted to spring on him right away. Not until they had a little more time to build back up everything that had been blown apart.

But he realized that he now had a confidence he hadn't had before, that they _could_ build it back up, that things hadn't fallen apart so far that they couldn't be fixed.

_He came back._

And that was something to build on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are at the end! I've been terrible at answering comments lately, but if I don't manage to get to it, just know I really appreciate them and I'm delighted you've enjoyed this. <3


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